WHAT IS MOCKPLUS?

Mockplus is a faster and easier prototyping
tool to help you make prototypes by making
interactions with simple drag-and-drop and working
on a team project easily and effortlessly. Microsoft, Oracle,
Simens, IBM, UBI, Huawei and 300+ global colleges are
using it, YOU SHOULD TOO!

10 Prototyping Tools Recommended For UI/UX Designers

Recently, I've read some articles about sharing books and websites
for UI/UX design. I think it might be useful to write an article about
prototyping tools and share with you. So, I collect 10 prototyping tools
this time and put them into 3 different categories.

Category A: Easy and fast.

Category B: Light and flexible.

Category C: Comprehensive and functional.

Let's have a look.

Category A: Easy and Fast.

Tools: Chainco, InVision, Flinto Lite.

Learning Curve: Low.

Just like the slogan of Chainco, these tools are great
demonstration tools for UI designers. All the three tools are based on
the web. Although, they look different from each other, but, in fact,
they have so many similar features. The interaction setting is about
creating hot spots, and taking the page-switching as the main function.
There's nearly no cost for learning or operation. Designers in China
like Chainco better, but it is only available in Chinese version. More
designers prefer to use InVision because of the function of
collaboration.

A great benefit of using this kind of tool is that, you could
import those pictures that UI made as the pages. Some of them could
import PS and AI design files directly, like InVision and Flinto Lite.
However, the shortcoming is also obvious. They don't support setting
components interaction or even setting components.

In this category, these tools are really good helpers in
interaction design. They have at least one thing in common: they are
relatively lighter and more flexible than other tools. Taking Flinto for
Mac as an example, you could create interactions by just moving the
components on the layers. Meanwhile, maybe the operation modes of these
four tools seem different, but they all use link point and drag-and-drop
as their basic operation mode. This highly visualization makes the
designing process easy and effective.

Mockplus is more typical in this category. Compared with the
components in Proto.io, simple components - container - completed
components, I prefer to choose Mockplus. It offers you more highly
packaged components, and as a "lazy" designer, I love this. What's more,
you could rely on the easy operation mode and over 2500 vector icons to
finish your design even though the network is not stable or totally not
available. Exporting HTML files and publishing your project directly
could make prototype testing much easier than before.

Of course, you will spend more time and costs on learning than
category A on the tools in category B. But, if you have tried tools in
catogory C, you will find out that, the costs for Group B are totally
acceptable.

Category C: Comprehensive and functional

Tools: Axure RP、Justinmind、Framer JS.

Learning Curve: high

If you want to make your prototype functionally comprehensive, then
there must be something related to coding in your design. In these
tools, Axure RP is more familiar to us. Also, Axure RP has kept a pretty
good balance between the difficulty and usability. However, there are
still many designers confused about some functions, such as setting
values and conditions.

While Axure is seeking a balance, what Framer JS telling us is
coding a prototype. This is the prototyping tool all based on coding. As
long as you could write the code, it will make everything come true.

These tools are more comprehensive than others, but you also need
to pay a lot to learn them, especially Framer JS, I'm pretty sure there
is no one else to compete with it in terms of the included powerful
functions. However, it's definitely not easy to master this powerful but
sophisticated tool. Hence, if you want to use tools in Category C, then
enough knowledge must be prepared.

These are 10 prototyping tools I want to share with you. Everyone
has a different understanding about prototyping, and the mastery level
of different knowledge is not the same either. Combining with your
personal situation, I think you will find a suitable tool among those 10
tools.

Mockplus is a desktop-based tool for prototyping mobile, web and desktop apps easily and
quickly. Create interactions
by simple drag-and-drop and your teamwork will be time-efficient with the collaboration features.